On Monday February 3, 2003, IRL
President and CEO Tony George, Senior Vice President of Racing Operations
Brian Barnhart and Senior Vice President of Business Affairs Ken Ungar
delivered a
State -Of-The IRL
presentation in Fontana, California. During that presentation
Ken Ungar stated: IRL TV ratings increased 17 percent on ABC and 31 percent on
ESPN in 2002, and attendance was up 9 percent last year. Was this a case
of artificial dissemination?

I contacted Fred Nation of the Indianapolis Motor
Speedway to verify where Ken Ungar's information came from because the data I had
didn't bear out those claims. Nation stated, "the TV ratings information comes
from Nielsen. We were up on ESPN, down on ESPN2 (up on the ESPN networks overall)
and up on ABC. The ABC figure excludes the Indy 500, which was down 1 point from
the year before. The total for ABC races outside of Indy was up. The attendance
figures are taken from media estimates. Our total figure is 1,016,740. Atlanta
dropped off the schedule. Fontana, Nazareth and Michigan were new. Pikes Peak,
Nashville and Chicagoland attendance figures, according to media figures were
down. All others had increases."

According to the 2000, 2001, and 2002 IRL year-end
sponsors report published by Joyce Julius
(a respected independent sponsor evaluation firm),
the conclusions are totally inconsistent with the IRL claims that the series is
growing. I am not sure where Ken Unger gets his information, but according
to the Joyce Julius report, supported by pages of exhaustive data, the IRL went
down in performance in every measurable category as summarized below.

Summary of Joyce Julius Report (see detail
at end of article)

Year

No. of
Events

Estimated Attendance

Viewing
HH's/event

In-Focus exposure time

No. Sponsor mentions

$ value based on cost per
0:30

2000

10

830,314

47:00:16

2,299

$175,330,660

2001

14 (+Up)

1,160,700 (+Up)

1.557m

65:33:40 (+Up)

2,421 (+Up)

$208,099,510 (+Up)

2002

16 (+Up)

1,017,476 (-Dn)

1.509m (-Dn)

42:59:56 (-Dn)

2,138 (-Dn)

$185,345,845 (-Dn)

According to this National Speed Sport News
article by Steve Mayer, attendance at Indy Racing League races
rose by 8.8% in 2002, after the league revised and lowered its series
attendance for 2001. In contrast, an independent third party estimated
that while the year-over-year IRL race day attendance was static, the
per race average fell by 13.4%.

The Mayer article goes on to say that the
IRL held 14 events in 2001, and increased its number of races to 16 in
2002. During last week's IndyCar Series State of Sport Address, Ken
Unger, the IRL Senior Vice President of Business Operations, stated,
"Because of the hard work of our promoter partners and the league
staff, attendance grew by 9% from 2001 to 2002, with some of our
tracks experiencing significant growth."

After making adjustments, the IRL
estimated that 934,700 fans attended its tracks on race day in 2001.
In 2002, the IRL estimated, 1,016,740 spectators attended its races.
Joyce Julius Associates, a highly respected independent
sponsorship-evaluation firm, tabbed estimates for the 2001 14-race
season at 1,160,700 attendees.

Its estimate for the 16-race 2002 series
was 1,017,476 people. According to JJA, the average number of IRL
race-day fans declined by 19%% from 75,764 in 2001 to 63,539 in 2002.
The IRL estimated a 5.7% decline of 3,172 fans per race from an
average of 66,764 spectators in 2001. JJA derives its estimates from
media reports, as does the IRL. The IRL, however, after Unger was
appointed a year ago, introduced a new methodology, and retroactively
applied the system to 2001 (so in fact 2001 may have been worse than
previously reported).

Fred Nation provided the IRL's side of the story to
Mayer - "When Ken took over
business affairs at the end of 2001," explained Fred Nation, executive
vice president of communications of the IRL, "he looked at the numbers
provided in 2001 and determined that it was not the way to present
them. They were too high." "We decided," Nation continued, "that the
report which we would submit would be the average of all of the media
reports. We then went back and recalculated the 2001 figures early
last year, using that method."

CART reported attendance for 2002 at 2.6
million, or about 2.6 times more than the IRL, a significant amount.
CART gets a big attendance on all three days of a race weekend,
whereas the IRL only gets people to show up on race day, which is one
of the reasons why CART attendance dwarfs that of the IRL. Fans
find it boring to attend oval events on Friday and Saturday, with cars
just droning around in circles. Such is not the case for street
and road courses where the "event" keeps fans entertained all three
days.

What's
puzzling, and somewhat frustrating in all this is the fact that many reporters
regurgitate artificially disseminated information and spout the IRL is winning the
war, when in fact their race attendance is decreasing while CART's is increasing.
Whereas before the CART/IRL split TV ratings and the overall health of open wheel
racing in America was thriving (back in 1995), the split, which all sensible
people of good will forecast might destroy the sport, has caused the two sides to
flounder while NASCAR and the France family are laughing all the way to the bank.

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